Conference focuses on open source in government

IT executives from a dozen states will meet in Oregon this week to take a close look at open source software and how a collaborative approach to application development could help them cut costs and speed software development.

Collaboration is becoming increasingly important as government organizations now comfortable with Linux consider relying on open source for business applications. The issue will be among several areas covered during the first Government Open Source Conference in Portland this week.

The event, sponsored by Oregon State University's Open Source Lab , also will include discussion about the benefits and challenges of migrating from legacy applications to open source. In addition, attendees will hear firsthand from government officials already bringing in open source.

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IT executives from a dozen states will meet in Oregon this week to take a close look at open source software and how a collaborative approach to application development could help them cut costs and speed software development.

Collaboration is becoming increasingly important as government organizations now comfortable with Linux consider relying on open source for business applications. The issue will be among several areas covered during the first Government Open Source Conference in Portland this week.

The event, sponsored by Oregon State University's Open Source Lab , also will include discussion about the benefits and challenges of migrating from legacy applications to open source. In addition, attendees will hear firsthand from government officials already bringing in open source.

"Most of these agencies are already using Linux . Now they're trying to figure out, 'OK, we've got the low-hanging fruit. What about the stuff we're spending a lot of money on: custom solutions?'," says Scott Kveton, associate director of the Oregon State University Open Source Lab.

That's where an open source-based collaboration approach can help, analysts say.

"Particularly in state and local governments, you have a situation where there are a lot of things that they do that are very similar state to state," says Michael Goulde, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. "There are all sorts of things that require software, and rather than purchasing individual packages or developing individual applications it just makes a whole lot of sense for governmental entities to collaborate, to create communities, and jointly develop and share software."

Universities and colleges have been collaborating on software development within organizations, such as the Sakai Project, launched by the University of Michigan and Indiana University in January 2004 to develop open source collaboration and education-focused software.

"The idea is that they can build applications and defray the cost and risk across several different organizations," Kveton says. "State government saw this and said, 'Jeez, we could do the same thing but with state, local and federal government.'"

The hope is that the Government Open Source Conference will spur cooperation between government IT executives, Kveton says. "We'll be breaking out into agency groups and hopefully will define some projects," he adds.

About 115 IT managers from 12 states, including California, Idaho, Montana, South Carolina and Virginia are expected to attend.

The conference was initiated in May as a way to bring together government leaders in Oregon, but it quickly expanded, Kveton says. Across the country, government agencies are beginning to look at ways they can work together to develop open source applications.